START contains no secret deals – Russian Foreign Minister

There are no secret deals made on the sidelines of the Strategic arms reduction treaty between Russia and the US, said Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, responding to allegations by a group of US Senators.

“Everything that we have come to terms with is in the text of the document and the additions,” the foreign minister said. “These are open documents – both Senate and State Duma deputies have them. There are no agreements apart from those that are stated in those documents.”

Several republicans have written a letter to US secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanding details of the negotiations to find out if there are any covert agreements on missile defense.

US Senators were especially interested in whether there were some secret obligations taken by the US party that could harm the US administration’s plans for building the Global Anti Missile Defense System, Sergey Lavrov said.

The treaty is having a hard time in the US Senate as Republicans cast doubts over the agreement.

It was signed in April in Prague, slashing the countries’ nuclear stockpiles by third.

It includes link between strategic defensive and offensive missiles and interconnection of the anti-missile defense system and START, which was the long-insisted point of the Russian side.